Do you drink enough water? How do you know? Do you count the number of ounces  you drink based on a doctor’s recommendation, health magazine, etc. or can you just tell if you’ve had enough?

I know that I don’t drink enough water. I enjoy water, but I have to remind myself to drink it. I’d rather have diet soda, to be honest. My urologist (boy, does that make me feel old to talk about my specialists) told me after my bladder surgery (*sigh – again with the feeling old thing) last year that I should drink water ounce-for-ounce compared to anything else I drink. 16oz Coke Zero at the office? Should drink 16oz water, too.

This is something that I I know I need to work on, and I’m trying to do better. I welcome your tips on how you manage to drink enough H2O!

I fixed the most amazing pot of coffee this morning. I would offer to share, but it’s all gone. 🙂  What made it so wonderful? I’m so glad you asked …

Thanks to my culinary hero, Alton Brown, my coffee will never be the same. The boys and I love watching his show, Good Eats, and in one episode, he mentioned a little trick to transform your morning java: Add a pinch of kosher salt!

Seriously, a bit of kosher salt in the basket with the grounds makes all the difference in the world. The coffee is unbelievably smooth, not bitter at all … and now it sounds so good, I wish I’d made more! 🙂

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

P.S. I have also used plain ol’ iodized salt when I was out of kosher, and perhaps it’s all in my head, but I think the kosher is better.

Today is Foodie Friday, and I nearly let time get away from me! Since I’ve been in a rush this week, I thought I’d share one of my favorite, quick, low-carb meals: snack supper!

The kids love it, too, and they can even help prepare dinner (depending on their knife skills, you might want to let the little ones rinse off the veggies or arrange the platters and leave the slicing & dicing to the big people). Just cut up any combination of the following into snack-size bites and arrange on a platter with some ranch &/or spinach-artichoke dip. We have a couple of football-shaped trays with three sections each, and the boys enjoy using those. They have the liberty to pick & choose what snacky things they want, but they have to have a minimum of one veggie choice. We got really fancy one night and made melted cheese fondue for dipping. Yum!! Give everyone a couple of toothpicks and let them have at it!

• summer sausage (read the label, but there are some very low-carb ones!)
• block cheese (our faves are monterrey jack, pepper jack, swiss & cheddar)
• cauliflower
• broccolli
• celery
• baby carrots (for the boys … too many carbs for me)
• cherry or grape tomatoes (not a big fan, myself, but some of the boys love them)
• green olives
• crackers (again, for the boys)
• zucchini squash (from our garden! Woot!)

Did I leave out anything? What else would you include for a snack supper?

Cheese tray, red wine and a good book …

… the trifecta for a perfect evening to myself.

Going low-carb has opened my eyes to the sugar content in everything that I eat … and drink. I used to love Dr Pepper with a shot of vanilla from Sonic, until I learned that Dr Pepper has 27 grams of sugar per cup (and I drank at least 32 oz in each sitting). My other favorite summertime beverage used to be sweet tea. Taking a local favorite as an example, McAlister’s Deli’s sweet tea, I found multiple estimates ranging from 60-77g sugar (!!) per drink. That’s more carbs than I now eat in TWO DAYS.

Those two all-around favorites aside, what about refreshing adult beverages? Needless to say, margaritas are chock-full of sugar … oddly enough, not because of the tequila! It’s all in the mixer. Grain liquors such as tequila, rum, vodka and bourbon/whiskey actually have negligible carbs! I can’t explain how it happens, but somewhere along the distillation process, the carbs go bye-bye! There are also some great tasting, low-cal mixers out there, such as Baja Bob’s sugar-free margarita mix.

Regular beer is also out the wazoo with carbs. When you consider that even the lightest beer on the market (last time I checked, it was Michelob Ultra and/or Miller Lite) still has 2.5-3 g carbs per serving, mixed drinks are actually a better option for low-carbers. Besides, who wouldn’t rather have a rum & diet instead of a watery light beer?  😉

How many times a week do I catch myself saying those words to the boys? Someone is playing in the sink instead of brushing teeth or letting the bathtub fill up too much: “Don’t waste the water!” Well, guess who forgot to turn off the soaker hose last night? Yep, that would be me. I suppose it is also the 11yo’s fault, since it was his job to turn on the hose, but I should have thought to turn it off … before 3am when I woke straight up in bed and remembered.

Of course, the garage door was loud as it opened, and dogs started barking. I looked at the garden again this morning and immediately thought of Viva Pinata when the watering meter turns to blue, indicating that you’ve overdone it. I hope that I didn’t turn our garden from drought to drowned! 😦

From now on, I will set a timer when we turn on the soaker hose!

I had good intentions of being neighborly and making some cookies for a friend who was going into the hospital today (and extras to keep at home to nibble on, too), but the batch turned out to be a flop. They weren’t sweet enough and were far too crumbly. It was a low-carb recipe for almond cookies that I adapted, since I had peanut butter on hand instead of almond butter, but that wasn’t the problem. I’ve made some really scrumptious low-carb baked goods that you couldn’t tell were low-carb/sugar [at least, I couldn’t tell]. So, I had to get to the bottom of it – what went wrong this time?

I realized two glitches after-the-fact: 1) I’ve baked with Splenda before, but I should have measured a packed cup of the granulated kind, rather than the loose scoop that I used; 2) I recently bought some new whey protein powder (an awesome binding/filler for low-carb recipes!); unfortunately, I didn’t notice that I bought *plain* instead of vanilla. Blech. I didn’t notice it in my smoothie, but I sure could tell the difference in the cookies! I needed to have compensated with a splash of vanilla extract.

Rather than toss the whole batch, I decided to try an experiment. I crumbled the cookies (not a difficult task, since they were already falling apart) and lined the bottom of a baking sheet. Then, I whipped up a box of sugar-free butterscotch pudding – according to the “pie filling” instructions – and poured it evenly over the top. I refrigerated it for a couple of hours and voila … Pudding Crumble:

It was pretty yummy for a salvage effort, if I may say. To do it over again, I still should have added some more Splenda & vanilla, but the crumbles made a sort of graham cracker-ish crust that was surprisingly good. With a bit of tweaking, this could be a guiltless dessert to take for a pot-luck!

Since I told you last week about something that I have always loved, I thought that this week, I would share a food that I never thought I would learn to like. You see, I am a creamy peanut butter gal. The only part of pecan pie that I like is the syrupy middle. I don’t care for Snickers, PayDay bars or Rocky Road ice cream. The fact is, I have never been a  huge fan of nuts. I like the flavor but not the gritty texture.

I do like pistachio nuts; for some reason, they have always been a fave. The rest, I could take or leave. When I went low-carb, I figured that I would give them a try again. Over the past year, I have reacquainted myself with various nutty delights, and I have to admit that they aren’t as bad as I used to think. I guess it’s true what they say about taste buds changing as you grow up!

Some varieties of nuts are better than others, carb-wise, so I would encourage you to read the labels, but as a general rule, they are a great snack option as a low-sugar, high-protein treat. I recently discovered my new favorite, and I am considering hiding the box so that I don’t have to share with the boys:

Nomnomnom! They are cocoa-dusted almonds, and they are soooo good. When you subtract the fiber from the total carb count, they are only 3 net carbs per ounce with a powerful 6 grams of protein. My usual almonds are 2 net carbs, so this slightly chocolaty kind is a yummy change of pace for very little guilt. Talk about an excellent snack choice!

I have always loved milk. My mom used to turn up her nose because I would prefer milk over just about any other beverage — I even drank milk with pizza. When I went low-carb, I quickly learned that milk is a huge source of sugar, and I dreaded giving it up.

Even “healthy” Skim and 2% milk have 12g of carbs per cup — all sugar! Meanwhile, 1% and whole have 13g of sugar. To put it in perspective, that’s a little less sugar than a Snickers bar. We’ll save the discussion of why fat isn’t bad for you for another day, but suffice it to say that you aren’t saving much by drinking watered-down skim milk. If you’re going to drink milk, you might as well enjoy it and drink it whole.

So, what does a low-carbing milk lover like me do to quench my thirst? Well, there’s soy milk, which packs 12g of carbs per cup (9 of which are sugar) – not much better, unless you opt for the unsweetened variety, which is a much easier to swallow 4g total carbs per cup (1 fiber and 1 sugar).

Taste-wise, however, I prefer vanilla unsweetened almond milk. It has only 2g total carbs, 1 of which is fiber, and <1 g sugar. When calculating net carbs, you subtract the fiber from the total, so this example has a net value of only 1g. Almond milk has less protein than regular milk, but I make up for that with the rest of my daily intake of meat, cheese & nuts, so it’s no biggie.

Besides the dietary rationale, milk has gotten so darned expensive, it’s not much more pricey to buy the almond milk. My boys like the flavor, and although they aren’t on a low-carb plan, I do try to watch their sugar intake. We haven’t axed regular milk all together, but I’m seriously considering it. The price difference just isn’t worth it, when milk is pushing $4/gallon and the store brand almond milk is $2.30/half-gallon.